The Other Side of Dare

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

  “I heard that.”

  Big Red waved for the waitress.

  She came over. “You finally ready to order now, Red?”

  “Yeah. And put it all on my tab.”

  Darius and Big Red gave her their order. She smiled at Darius, then left.

  Big Red leaned in closer to Darius. “Okay, DC. Talk to me. What’s going on? I heard you got this big-time important job now.” He grinned, showing off the one tooth in the front of his mouth that was trimmed in gold.

  “Had,” Darius said. “I had a big time important job. I was let go today.”

  “You unemployed again? That was quick?” Big Red shook his head. “That sucks.”

  “Tell me about it. I was pulling in some major bucks, too. And I really liked what I was doing.”

  “Word on the street is you had a fine honey alongside you. They called her your ride-to-die-for chick. Say she was just that fine—a little bit of honey on the side.”

  “We were coworkers. And she wasn’t any honey on the side, either.”

  “So you trying to tell me you didn’t get with her? ’Cause I know you, DC. This your boy you talking to. This Big Red here sitting across from you.”

  “She was the boss’s daughter,” Darius said with a sheepish grin. “I might be a lot of things, but crazy isn’t one of them.”

  “Ah, man, you know you love a challenge. Maybe that’s why you lost your job. Her daddy found out and canned you.”

  “Nope. I was working on a political campaign. The money dried up. I also figured he didn’t have a chance of winning, but like I said: The money was good. And loser money spends just as good as winner’s money do.”

  A woman sashayed through the door. Darius recognized her immediately. Big Red started waving at her, which was a bit of a surprise to Darius. She smiled and came over to their table.

  Big Red stood up and gave her a bear hug. “Hey there, pretty lady. You came to get your grub on, too, I see.”

  “Yes. You know after you introduced me to this place, I was hooked. I have to come get my fix at least once a week.” She smiled, then looked at Darius.

  “Where are my manners?” Big Red said. “Darius, this is—”

  “Gigi Thornton,” Darius said.

  “Oh, so you two know each other. Well, I would imagine you might,” Big Red said, still standing. “The Divine Gigi is a big-time PI. That’s private investigator for all you common folks. She good, too.”

  Frowning, Darius stood up as not to be at a disadvantage. “You’re a private investigator?”

  Gigi nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “She been one for years. How long you been doing this now, Divine Gigi?”

  “Coming up on my tenth year anniversary next month,” Gigi said.

  “You here meeting somebody?” Big Red asked, scanning the restaurant. “Because you more than welcome to sit with us iffen you ain’t.”

  “Yeah, I’m meeting somebody. But thanks for the offer, Big Red. You’re always such a gentleman.” Gigi looked at the door. “Well, it looks like my lunch date has arrived. It was good seeing you again . . . both of you.” She smiled, nodded, then left to go to her table. Big Red sat back down.

  Darius continued to look at the man she was greeting. He couldn’t believe it; it was William Threadgill. Gigi must have mentioned to William that he was there, because William turned and looked his way, throwing up his hand to wave at him.

  Darius didn’t bother waving back. Suddenly, things were starting to come together. He sat down. “So how do you happen to know Gigi?” Darius asked.

  “The Divine Gigi? She came to my shop looking for a good mechanic. It was something pretty simple with her car. She and I hit it off right off the bat. She would then stop by the shop from time to time just to say hello. She was hungry one day, said she was looking for a good place to get her grub on. I invited her here.”

  “How long ago was this? How long ago did she come to your shop?”

  Big Red looked up as though the answer was written on the ceiling. He looked at Darius. “Sometime around the first of March of this year. You know I don’t keep up with stuff like that. You’re the one who was working for some big political head. I just fix cars.”

  “And you’re good at it, so don’t be saying you just fix cars.”

  “See, man, you always make a brother feel good. That’s why I want to help you. I want you to get yourself on the right track though. You got a good woman in Tiffany. I don’t want to see you lose her. You know they say you don’t miss your water until your well runs dry. I’m trying to keep you from knowing what it feels like to be thirsty while in the ocean. I done been there; it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Darius leaned in. “Big Red, I need to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did Gigi ever ask you anything about me? Did my name ever come up or anything that would lead back to me?”

  “Come to think of it, she did ask me something about you once. That was before I knew she was a PI though. I didn’t think nothing about it at the time.” Big Red sat back against his seat. “You think somebody hired her to investigate you or something?”

  “You see that man she’s with right now?”

  Big Red looked over where Gigi sat. “Yeah. The guy that’s old enough to be her father. Is he her father?”

  “That’s the guy I was working for. Not exactly working for; he runs things for the guy I was working for. And, no, I don’t think he’s her father, although, it is possible.”

  Big Red nodded. “So they just probably hired her to check you out before they hired you. I can see that. I know a lot of these employers are doing stuff like that to make sure the people they’re bringing in are on the up-and-up. They say they even check your credit scores now. I just wish I’d known that when she was cozying all up to me. I don’t like being used. I should go over there and let her know as much.”

  “Don’t, Big Red. It won’t help. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I guess she was just doing her job. She just like the rest of us out here. She just a bird trying to find a worm so she’ll have something to eat.”

  Darius looked Gigi’s way again. She was laughing, throwing her head back. The waitress brought Darius and Big Red their food.

  “This looks and smells so good it makes you want to slap your own self,” Big Red said, rubbing his hands together.

  “Yep. It makes you want to slap yourself,” Darius said, still looking Gigi’s way. It was all making sense now. Gigi was the person who’d likely done him in.

  He finished eating and left ten minutes after Big Red did. Gigi walked up behind him. “I hope you know it was nothing personal,” she said, almost whispering the words into his ear. “It was strictly business.”

  Darius didn’t have anything to say to her. He continued to walk toward his vehicle. She’d deceived him on every turn. What was there left to say?

  “Cat got your tongue? You’re not going to say anything to me?”

  He stopped and spun around. “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to come speak and to let you know it was only business.”

  “I’ve deceived others; you deceived me. I suppose it’s true what they say: You reap what you sow.”

  “Galatians 6:7. ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’”

  “Oh, so you know scriptures, too, huh? I guess the next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’re a preacher or something.”

  She smiled, then shook her head. “No. But I am a Christian.”

  “A Christian who lies. A Christian who’ll pretend to be something that she’s not. Hmmm, let’s see now, what’s the word for that? Oh, yeah: hypocrite.”

  “Before you waste time trying to get the speck out of my eye, maybe you should worry about the plank in your own,” Gigi said.

  “Let me ask you something. Is your real name even Gigi or was that all part of your e
laborate scam?”

  “I told you my birth name: Georgina Thornton. So, yes, my name really is Gigi. All of that was the truth.”

  “But all of that about looking for a job, needing some encouragement, you just happening to run into me at the coffeehouse, bumping into me at church . . . all of those things were merely fabricated lies to find out more about my life.”

  “The church part turned out to be a good thing. I really enjoyed Pastor Landris. And now that you know the truth about who I really am, I suppose I can feel free to come back to the church on a more regular basis. I didn’t want to run into you too often.”

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t want to cause me to become suspicious or anything. I just might have figured out what you were up to.” He smirked. “So how did all of this go down exactly?”

  She shrugged.

  “You owe me that much, Gigi, considering you may have destroyed my life and home.”

  “You can’t blame that on me. You sow, and one day you’re going to reap. It’s a spiritual law. It might not be today, maybe not tomorrow. But in due time, in due season, you will reap what you’ve sown. Good or bad, it’s coming up again, only multiplied.”

  “Please . . . spare me the moral lecture, will you?”

  “I’m just trying to give you some godly advice.”

  “I’d prefer you not,” Darius said.

  “All right. You want to know how this went down. Originally, I was hired to find out who you were and if there were any damaging skeletons rattling around in your closet. I can’t say what that was about; it’s not for me to determine in order to take on a case. I learned quite quickly though of your proclivity for extramarital affairs. One piece of advice if I may: If you don’t want anyone to ever know about something, then don’t disclose it to anyone else.”

  Darius nodded. “That’s where Big Red came in.”

  “Don’t blame him. He’s a pretty nice guy. He didn’t have a clue what I was doing or who I was.”

  “How did he find out you were a private investigator? He calls you the Divine Gigi, you know.”

  She smiled. “When he asked me to this restaurant. His sister, Clarice, recognized me. She’d hired me to check on something for her—”

  “You mean her husband.”

  “That’s none of your business,” Gigi said.

  “But my business was okay for you to disclose to other people. You didn’t seem to have a problem with that at all.”

  “For that purpose, your business became my business.”

  “Ha-ha. You’re just full of jokey-jokes.”

  Gigi shrugged. “Anyway, his sister told him I was a PI. But because of how Big Red and I met, he didn’t think much of it.”

  “So he just told you all of my business? I guess he thought he was going to get with you or something?”

  “You mean the same way you were thinking you were going to?”

  “Just go on and finish telling me the rest of this so I can be on my way.”

  “I found out about folks like Fatima and Tracy—”

  “Big Red told you about Tracy?” Darius shook his head. “There are times when Big Red really is one fry short of a Happy Meal, but he doesn’t normally volunteer information like that. How did you get him to tell you things when he really didn’t know you from Adam?”

  “I’m really good at what I do. Think about how much you told me without you even thinking about it. You showed me a picture of your family, told me the names of your wife and children. You made comments about certain people like . . . what was that guy’s name? Clarence Walker. Yes, Clarence Walker, when you were talking about Gabrielle and how she was fooling people about who she truly was. Clarence definitely had no problem telling me things about you. I take it there’s some bad blood between the two you. I saw you with Paris that day at the coffeehouse, well, actually I kind of followed you there, and you told me—”

  “Okay. I get your point.” Darius held up his hand to make her be quiet. “But I don’t know how you got Big Red to tell you the names of people I’ve had affairs with . . . both Fatima and Tracy.”

  “The same way you likely relayed it. You probably didn’t come right out and tell Big Red all that you’d done. But if a person is smart enough to listen and read between the lines, it’s easy enough to figure out the whole story,” Gigi said. “And for some reason unbeknownst to me, people like talking about things like that with perfect strangers. I suppose it’s because they don’t think it will ever go anywhere. Oddly, people think that telling strangers things is safer than telling someone who may know that person. All I had to do was to get Big Red going on a particular subject. He gladly provided me with examples using one of his friends. I would press him further about it, reassuring him that I didn’t know the person he was talking about anyway so it was safe to tell me what he otherwise wouldn’t.”

  “So he thought he was helping you with your problem,” Darius said. “The same way I did.”

  “There you go.” Gigi moved her purse from one shoulder to the other. “Big Red thinks a lot of you. After you got that job with the representative’s campaign, my job was pretty much finished as it pertained to you.”

  “Pretty much?”

  Gigi smiled. “Yeah. There were a few other things I was asked to do. I probably shouldn’t tell you that though.”

  “You owe me, Gigi.”

  She flashed him a smile. “Okay. What will it hurt now? I was asked to pass on some information to Paris. I was to get the information to her that Gabrielle was actually Jasmine’s birth mother and that she’d given her daughter up for adoption.”

  “So you were the one who told Paris?”

  “Not in person. I just made sure she got the information. I left it in an envelope on her desk in her office. I also let her know that her husband was representing Gabrielle against her.”

  “Oh, she got it all right; the day we had that event at the hotel ballroom. She was upset about it for sure. After her husband confirmed he was representing Gabrielle against her, thus believing everything else was true; she apparently confronted Gabrielle,” Darius said. “But who? Who would put you up to doing something like that?”

  “That”—she pointed her finger at him like it was the barrel of a gun—“I can’t disclose. But what I can say is that I was paid handsomely to do it.”

  “So what’s the deal with you and William Threadgill? Maybe he’s not everything he’s presenting himself to be. So are you working on another case?”

  She started walking backward away from him. “I’m always working.”

  “Hold up. Don’t go.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “But this concludes our tête-à-tête.” She turned and walked quickly to her car.

  Chapter 45

  Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

  —Proverbs 6:27

  Darius was home alone. The children were both back in school and Junior at daycare. Tiffany was at work. It had been three weeks and a day since Tiffany learned the truth about him and Fatima and had asked him to leave (which he refused to do), three weeks since he’d lost his job, two days since he’d tried talking to Tiffany, who still uncharacteristically had nothing to say to him, one day since he’d thought about calling the church and possibly requesting someone to counsel him on what he should do to fix things with his wife, when his doorbell rang.

  A man stood outside with an electronic handheld device. “Darius Connors?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have a package I need you to sign for.”

  “What is it?” Darius asked, looking at the large envelope the man held in his hand.

  “I don’t get paid to read them, just deliver them.” He handed Darius the envelope, then held up the electronic device. “Sign on the line please.”

  Darius looked at the envelope and saw it was from a lawyer’s office. He signed; the man left.

  Walking back inside, he opened the envelope and couldn’t believe his eyes.

&nb
sp; He immediately called Tiffany at work. “You’ve filed for legal separation?”

  “I see you got the papers,” she said with a calmness that scared Darius a little.

  “Yeah, I got them. What’s this about?”

  “It’s about me asking you to leave and you refusing.”

  “That’s because I want to work things out with you,” Darius said.

  “Listen, I can’t talk right now. I don’t want to lose my job,” Tiffany said in almost a whisper. “I need this job, especially now.”

  “And I don’t want to lose you; I don’t want to lose my family.”

  “Well, maybe you should have thought about that when you were out there doing what you were doing.”

  “I made a mistake. Okay? And that was years ago. It’s over now. You can’t convict me of something that’s so far in the past it had to be dug up to be killed.”

  “Darius, it might be old for you, but it’s new for me. I’m left to process a lot of things right now. You may have held that fire to your bosom years ago, but the clothes that were burned still show evidence of that fire. I’m hanging up now, Darius, because like I just said, I need my job. I have children to take care of.”

  “Please, Tiff—”

  She hung up. He started to call back but knew it wouldn’t do any good. He looked at the papers again. He was being ordered to leave his home? Legally, he was being forced out of his own house. This was crazy!

  He hurled the stapled papers across the room toward the fireplace. “Where exactly am I supposed to go! Huh?” He looked up. “Where am I supposed to go?”

  Chapter 46

  For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him.

  —Psalm 55:12

  Lawrence arrived home a little after five o’clock that evening. A woman was there talking to his wife, Deidra. He’d seen the woman before but couldn’t quite put his finger on when or where.